By Sarah Eaton

Imagine you’re in possession of a crystal ball that, when you gaze into it, allows you to tell just where your customers and prospects are in their buying cycle. You would know what they were thinking, when they were thinking it. Sales would be child’s play.

Crystal balls and other clairvoyant methods aside, you can apply the following ideas to make your sales proactive and savvy:

• Identify the behavior of your prospects and customers when they are early in their decision-making process.
• Figure out a way to identify that behavior before your competitors do.
• Build a relationship by giving your prospects or customers something of value—usually this means information or consulting in the B2B sphere.

Then, you can count on the strength of your relationship to tip the scales in your favor when the time comes for your customers and prospects to buy.

Challenge: discovering your customers’ and prospects’ interests through a systematic, scalable, non-invasive, legal and value-added methodology.

Fact: reading patterns are a great leading indicator of future purchasing.

Solution: trend analysis of what topics your e-newsletter’s subscribers are reading.

Changes in reading behavior are precipitated by a number of things, including shifts in interest and trends, budget approval, pain and need.

Just as you interpret complex signals sent by body language and expression in order to understand and nurture your personal relationships, you can learn to be intuitive about your customers’ needs by observing their reading patterns.

For instance, I have a pattern I follow when I’m buying a new car. Three months before I make a purchase, I’ll start going to auto Websites, buying car magazines and doing initial sweeps of lots and showrooms.

As I gather more information and feel more secure about my intended purchase, I’ll do test drives and narrow the field.

I’m not going to buy the car on impulse, or within the first couple of days of my search. Because it’s a major purchase, I need information, and I need time, until I feel I’m making exactly the right decision.

These patterns are generally the same across the board for purchasing. The first step is seeking out information in the form of the written word.

Think of a human resources administrator, who is changing insurance carriers for her company, which has well over a thousand employees. The first step is research.

She scours the Web for information, signing up for newsletters, reading articles and making side-by-side comparisons.

Only after she feels secure in her research does she begin making calls to potential new companies to discuss her needs.

Question: What will happen if:

• One of those companies is aware of her research activities and can proactively contact her?
• The company knows which specific aspects of a policy are important to her and her company because they know what she has been reading?
• The company has been sending her extra information in the form of e-newsletter articles and invitations to informative webinars (helping her with her research)?

Answer: She will see them as a company who recognizes her needs and provides her with valuable information. She will see them as contenders for her business. That company has the edge over the others who don’t receive the benefits of trend analysis.

Here at BeTuitive, we have found that by determining patterns in our prospects’ and customers’ e-newsletter reading topics, we can identify a need well ahead of our competition.

We look to draw data over many months and use trend analysis algorithms to deepen our understanding of our customers’ needs and desires to give us that edge—essentially creating our own crystal ball.

Sarah Eaton is the Managing Editor for BeTuitive Marketing. Sarah brings her strong gut sense for business, an interest in marketing analytics and a respect for the power of the written word to BeTuitive. Check out her blog: BeTuitive: Actionable Results for the latest e-marketing strategies.

Copyright © 2007 BeTuitive Marketing